Where Next? → Ostrakízein → Drastic Spastic Plastic

Hey Neighbor. Preppy designers at J. Crew and Ralph have long outsourced fabrication to China. Now, China is in-sourcing preppy designers to spin up J. Crew- and Ralph-inspired brands like Mithridate, which sounds like an infection and looks like a lawn party.

Verticalization cuts both ways. Aspirations cut one.

➺ GQ featured Upper Middle this week… and some lawyers got kinda pissed. Am I cool now? (Just kidding. I was always cool.)

➺ Devoted readers will notice a new format. The goal is to create feedback loops and provide you with more insights. Click some buttons!

➺ It’s the end of oyster season. Get one last slurp in.

Upper Middle’s 2025 Gardening Survey is our attempt to find out what members of the oatmilk elite will be planting, watering, and accidentally killing this spring. Data will be shared with survey participants and, as always, with members.

STATUS ❧ The hard thing to make look easy…

From Ostrakízein, Greek for "To Banish"

Your Friends & Neighbors is remarkably honest – at least for an ampersand-ing show about Jon Hamm purloining Richard Mille watches – about what enlightened, cosmopolitan types are willing and unwilling to accept. On the show, Hamm’s anger at his now ex-wife^[1] for cucking him is treated as more socially poisonous than her betrayal. He is ostracized. She is not.

The twists calls to mind something Upper Middle Hero and sociologist E. Digby Baltzell said in an interview near the end of his life: “One of the tragedies now is that to be anti-black, anti-Semitic, or anti-any group is more of a transgression than to be a bloody liar or an adulterer. Personal morality is changed into group morality and it will never work.” Who we don’t invite matters as much if not more than who we do.

➺ “In ten years, we're going to look at people we know who are still working in thankless corporate jobs like we do with people who are still playing World of Warcraft after everyone else moved on.” (READ MORE)

➺ I prefer elitism over the elites. That is to say, credentials themselves do not make for truth. Instead, usually the malady is that elites do not take their own elitism seriously enough.”(READ MORE)

EAVESDROPPINGS ❧ What we’re (over)hearing…

➺ “Honestly, I don't look. It's like Schrödinger's 401(k). I’m sure it’s down. It’s probably way down. But I don’t know that so I can’t feel bad about it. Well… not too bad anyway.” - Drunk performance marketer on financial psychology.

➺ “If I have to choose between living in a country that’s bracing for war and a country that’s punching itself in the dick, I’m going with the latter every time.” - Swedish executive on staying in the U.S.^[2]

➺ “He doesn’t take love seriously.” - Six-year-old with boundaries on why he won’t hug his uncle.

What’s the most Upper Middle thing you hear this week?

TASTE ❧ The next best thing to a personality…

Loaded to the Gills

If you’re looking to get a decent bottle of wine for less than $150 and you’re unsure what to choose, go with the one with a fish on the label. According to a big tear down by The Pudding correlating reviews to animal logos and brand heraldry, wines with fish on the label are almost 5x more likely to be a good deal (dollars to five star reviews on the Vivino app) than wines with amphibians or reptiles. Fish wines also significantly outperform cat and bird wines. Pig wines mostly just suck.

-“The very sign of [America’s] energy is that it doesn’t believe in itself: it fails to succeed, even at a cost of millions, in persuading you that it does.” (READ MORE)

-“I got the sense that their anger was, at least to some extent, a cover for dismay at a more diffuse and painful set of losses, as tech and finance have encroached on the Mountain West: the ski resorts bought up by private equity; the dirtbag climbers priced out of small towns; Bozeman, of all places, becoming the next tech hot spot.” (READ MORE)

MR. MARKET ❧ The key to winning is not losing

Eurasian. Me Too?

The Mr. Market is authored by Andrew Feinberg, a retired hedge fund manager who has beaten the S&P 500 for the last 30 years. He is the author/co-author of four books on personal finance.

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Dear Mr. Market,

President Trump’s 90-day pause of most tariffs above 10%, except those on China, makes me wonder: Are we out of the woods? Isn’t there a good chance the tariff pause will be permanent?

Jack B., Camden, Maine

***

Dear Jack,

I’ve never heard of someone from Maine trying do get out of the woods, but here we are. As to what passes for the president’s thinking…. I last spoke to President Trump in 1987 when I was writing for the New York Times. We had a 90-second chat and he lied to me. We did not discuss tariffs.

Even if Trump rolled back all his tariff increases—which is highly unlikely—I think the U.S. stock market will still wind upin the crapper. We’ve gone from leader of the free world to global pariah in less than three months. This is unlikely to change while Trump (or Vance) is in the Oval. Boycott America campaigns are likely to proliferate. Why would someone in Canada, Mexico, or Europe buy a car made in a country that wishes them ill when so many countries in Europe and Asia make great vehicles? If I lived abroad, the last thing I’d do is shlep the kiddies to Orlando.

This drag on the U.S. economy could last a long time. Granted, actions by President Trump could mitigate this somewhat, but that would make the outlook less bearish rather than bullish.

My favorite refuge remains cash (46% of my portfolio), but I’m thinking that the 54% I have invested in America is too much. I expect to move some of it to Europe and Asia soon. My sense is that no matter what Trump does, the French will look more favorably on German, Italian, and Swiss goods than they did last year. This doesn’t mean the French now like the Germans, Italians, or Swiss just that they dislike them less than than they dislike us.

Upper Middle is a member-supported publication. For full access to our work – including data reporting on how your peers spend time and money – become a member. Not only is joining free, members receive invitations to take highly paid (up to $300 an hour) professional surveys. This allows us to make money with rather than on our readers.

Here’s what your missing today:

➺ A bunch of interesting data on how Upper Middle readers are thinking about where to move next.

➺ A very interesting graph showing an unexpected relationship between tax concerns and thoughts about architecture.

➺A sex scene. (Not really).

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